This past Sunday, Pastor Frederick D. Haynes took the pulpit to address the murder of Charlie Kirk. And what came out of his mouth was a masterclass in double-speak:

“We ain’t got nothing to do with what they just did. A white Christian gets killed, murdered, not assassinated. We’re going to tell the whole truth today.

Martin King got assassinated, Malcolm X got assassinated, Medgar X got assassinated. Don’t compare Kirk to King. Ain’t no such comparison now.

Let me hasten to say, let me hasten to say, I’m anti-political violence. Kirk should still be alive. I don’t agree with the time, with anything Kirk said. What Kirk said was dangerous. What Kirk said was racist, rooted in white supremacy. Nasty and hate-filled, but he still should be alive.

He still should be playing with his kids. He still should be experiencing the love with his wife.”

Here’s the clip:

Notice he says Kirk should still be alive, but then immediately follows it with character assassination—calling Kirk “dangerous,” “racist,” “rooted in white supremacy,” and “hate-filled.” This isn’t condemnation of violence, it’s moral justification of the hatred that fueled the heinous act to begin with.

Haynes wants to make sure you know he’s “anti-political violence,” but he can’t resist painting Kirk as the kind of man who had it coming. He draws a hard line between Kirk and King—insisting Kirk wasn’t assassinated, he was just “murdered”—as if changing the vocabulary somehow strips the act of its political reality.

This is how you create a culture that tolerates violence against political enemies: you dehumanize them first. You say, “Yes, no one should shoot them,” but you make sure everyone listening knows why maybe, just maybe, it’s understandable that someone did. It’s the same rhetorical game we’ve heard from radicals for years—claim peace, but call your opponent a threat to peace.

And what kind of “shepherd” does this from the pulpit? Instead of teaching his flock to “weep with those who weep,” Haynes used a moment of tragedy to stoke the fires of division. Instead of calling murder evil, full stop, he gave it context—as if the gospel gives us permission to weigh the victim’s politics before deciding how much compassion they deserve.

Haynes invoked King, but what would King have said? King called for his followers to love their enemies, not justify their deaths with a list of grievances. King’s dream wasn’t that we’d divide the worth of a man’s life by his voting record.

This isn’t prophetic preaching—it’s partisan sermonizing. It doesn’t heal wounds. It rips them open wider. And until pastors like Haynes repent of using the pulpit to do the devil’s work of accusation, we’ll keep seeing more young men with guns deciding they’re judge, jury, and executioner.